Showing posts with label Rebecca Hall. Show all posts

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Rebecca Hall / Black and White

Rebecca Hall

BLACK AND WHITE

Rebecca Hall / ‘I was born in the wrong place and at the wrong time’

Rebecca Hall

‘I was born in the wrong place and at the wrong time’

She has starred in Hollywood blockbusters, costume dramas and, now, The BFG – but despite leading a ‘charmed life’, the actor insists she’s not a ‘perfect, entitled luvvy’

Xan Brooks
Thursday 21 July 2016 15.39 BST

When Steven Spielberg was casting the role of the Queen’s housemaid in The BFG, he knew who to call. The part required an actor who was English to the core and as posh as you like; ideally with a metaphorical clatter of hockey sticks thrown in for good measure. He told Rebecca Hall: “It’s a small role, but it’s significant – and I specifically want you to play it,” which was nice of him and flattering – and possibly a little galling as well, in that it suggests the director had a preconceived notion of what Hall represents. In this, I suspect, he is not alone.

Rebecca Hall, David Rylance, Ruby Barnhill y Steven Speilberg

“Directors assume I’m, like, establishment,” she explains, nose wrinkling, and then in the same breath concedes that she understands why. She comes with pedigree, brandishing a golden ticket that must be justified at every turn. To the innocent film-goer, she is a capable young British actor, equally at home in Hollywood blockbusters, gritty dramas and period costume. But to others she will always be stage royalty, the daughter of director Peter Hall and soprano Maria Ewing; a princess wheeled on to attend to the Queen.

Rebecca Hall
Photograph by Jake Chessum for the Guardian

Who, me? Why everyone is talking about Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall is used to people always wanting to talk about her dad, but now the Bafta-winning actor is having to get used to another line of questioning: her role in the break-up of a Hollywood golden couple. She talks gossip, girls' schools and growing up

Simon Hattenstone
Saturday 12 June 2010 00.02 BST

Rebecca Hall is a fine actor who starred in the best Woody Allen film in years, but she's better known now for her role in a recent tabloid splash, after she was cast as the femme fatale, or deadly English rose, who could, possibly, have destroyed the marriage of Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet. After all, she had worked with Mendes, they were friends, and apparently she was his type of girl (brainy, arty, good-looking).

We meet in a Manhattan cafe. She arrives on foot, alone, long, black dress, no make-up, flat sandals, sore ankles from where high heels have been rubbing. I look for Sam Mendes hiding round a corner with his high-art posse. Nothing doing. Does she live round here? No, she says apologetically, she's not been here before. So where is home these days? "That's a good question."

Rebecca Hall
Photograph by Richard Saker

Rebecca Hall

"I was worried everyone would hate me"

Being the daughter of Britain's best-known theatre director Sir Peter Hall might have had its advantages. But outstanding performances in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon and C4's upcoming thriller Red Riding prove that Rebecca Hall is not just daddy's girl

Andrew Anthony
Sunday 22 February 2009 00.01 GMT

ver since she was a little girl, Rebecca Hall has been identified as a promising talent. The daughter of Sir Peter Hall, who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and was director of the National Theatre, and Maria Ewing, the celebrated opera and jazz singer, she had great expectations encoded in her genes.

At 10 she appeared in her father's TV adaptation of The Camomile Lawn and also got herself an agent. And though her parents placed her fledgling career on hold for a decade, Hall's first adult appearance on stage, in Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession - again in a production by her father - landed her the Ian Charleson Award.

Rebecca with her father, theatre director Peter Hall, in 2010. Photograph by Dave M Benett

The award is given for the most outstanding classical performance on the British stage by an actor under 30. Hall was 20, fast-tracked from Cambridge University to Cambridge Circus, without any of the bother of drama school or life in provincial rep. Instead, with her lithe beauty and theatrical heritage, she walked straight into magazine lists of newcomers to watch.

Put all of this together, the famous parents, the elite university, the nepotism, the precocious success, and the photogenic bone structure, and 27-year-old Hall could seem like a walking overdose of old-fashioned privilege. From such an assessment, it would be tempting to conclude that her talent was much less about natural promise than predetermined profile.

Or at least it would be if her evident ability was not currently on display in Frost/Nixon, Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Channel 4's Red Riding, adapted from David Peace's novels of the same name. She plays, respectively, David Frost's jet-set girlfriend, a neurotic Manhattanite abroad, and a working-class femme fatale, and in each role she is instantly and memorably convincing.

Rebecca Hall

I meet Hall in a café in downtown Manhattan, a few blocks from her SoHo apartment. Her agent told me how to spot the actress: "She's tall and very pretty." She didn't take long to find. Dressed in black, she looks like she walked off the cover of a Velvet Underground album. Hall is what is often termed "willowy", meaning that she is tall but she wears her height with style.

The Roles of Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall
Photo by Michal Schwartz

THE ROLES OF REBECCA HALL

By KATHERINE CUSUMANO
Published 08/17/15

If you meet Rebecca Hall, she might ask you about your family history. "It's always something I do when I meet people," she says with a laugh. "Alright, tell me about your family, what's the deal?" Though she's just one in a household full of performers (her mother is an opera singer, her father a director, and her half-siblings scattered across a variety of theater and film disciplines), she's adamant that most families have as intriguing a story to tell as hers. (She concedes that hers is "more externally colorful.") She mentions Sarah Polley's recent documentaryStories We Tell by way of example—the film is premised on the idea that every family has its own story.

Rebecca Hall

THE GIFT

Don’t Be Surprised if Rebecca Hall Seems to Suddenly Turn into an American

Rebecca Hall

IN CONVERSATION

Don’t Be Surprised if Rebecca Hall Seems to Suddenly Turn into an American

The London-born star of The Gift talks to Krista Smith about her busy year and the late night of drinking that introduced her to Joel Edgerton.

BY KRISTA SMITH

AUGUST 6, 2015 2:38 PM

Rebecca Hall describes her career as “trying to keep on trucking on,” but what it looks like is a whole lot more impressive than that. At 33, the London-born actress has everything from a best-picture nominee (Frost/Nixon) and a superhero blockbuster (Iron Man 3) to a trippy Johnny Depp sci-fi drama (Transcendence) on her résumé. Her new film is yet another left turn: she stars opposite Jason Bateman and Joel Edgerton in this week’s The Gift, a domestic thriller about a seemingly perfect couple whose lives are upended by a visitor from the past. Hall spoke with senior west coast editor Krista Smith about the late-night party with Edgerton that led to the role, and why she may as well just keep an American accent 24/7 these days.

The Gift review – a sly thriller of social transgressions

In an impressive and unnerving directing debut, Joel Edgerton applies the same quiet assurance and attention to detail he’s displayed in his acting projects

Mike McCahill
Thursday 6 August 2015 21.00 BST

he actor Joel Edgerton’s directorial debut is a tremendously sly, insinuating thriller that pushes the social transgressions of cult favourites The Cable Guy and Chuck & Buck into subtler, more shaded territory. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play Simon and Robyn, an upwardly mobile LA couple settling into their new modernist home in the Hills when the dishevelled Gordo (Edgerton), a long-forgotten classmate of Simon’s, shows up – and keeps showing up, leaving increasingly extravagant housewarming presents, from window cleaner to koi carp, on their doorstep.

Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall at Sundance: Hollywood is scared of 'ugly' female characters

The actor on starring in an acclaimed Sundance drama about Christine Chubbuck – the news anchor who achieved notoriety in the 70s for killing herself on live TV – and why she’s rarely offered parts this complex

Nigel M Smith in Park City, Utah

Friday 29 January 2016 12.02 GMT

Hi, Rebecca! How are you?

Full of a head cold, but otherwise fine.

Sundance-related?

I think so. I think it’s just travelling and generally being over-adrenalised and happily pulled in too many directions. But yes, cold!

30 MINUTES WITH Rebecca Hall at Sundance / Hollywood is scared of 'ugly' female characters

Rebecca Hall
Poster by T.A.

30 MINUTES WITH

Rebecca Hall at Sundance: Hollywood is scared of 'ugly' female characters

Hi, Rebecca! How are you?

Full of a head cold, but otherwise fine.

Sundance-related?

I think so. I think it’s just travelling and generally being over-adrenalised and happily pulled in too many directions. But yes, cold!

The last time you were in Park City was with the broad comedy Lay the Favourite(1).

It’s a completely different thing to go with a film that doesn’t have distribution(2); it’s a really different animal. I had no experience of that. The two I came with before both had distribution; premiering them there was more like just having a coming-out party. There were stakes with Christine. It was also playing in the competition, which was a different thing as well. There was a lot more nerve involved. You wait for reviews, for buyers to circle it, and then you wait for the juries. It’s a nerve-racking process.

I was at the Sundance premiere of Christine: did you sit through the entire movie?

I did, yes! I saw a cut, but it wasn’t with music. And I think there is a difference when you see something with an audience, so I wanted to sit through it. I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. I found it really hard.

It’s a tough watch for anyone. Watching it took me back to the space I was in when I was doing it. I wasn’t really conscious of it while I was watching, but halfway through I thought: God, I’ve got this really bad tension, and why is my shoulder seizing up? My posture was changing in my seat as I was watching.

Rebecca Hall

Then you had to face the audience after for a Q&A.

I’m happy to talk about this film, because I think it needs talking about. Part of the reason I wanted to do it is because I wanted to portray some sort of empathetic version of a mental-health disorder, which often doesn’t get portrayed truly. I wanted to do it with no filter or worrying about being liked – but also for the audience to sympathise with her on some unimaginable level.

Getting up and doing a Q&A after people have just seen it is not exactly comfortable. You’re looking at a group of people who have the expression of: what did you do that for? And there are always people who are going to ask: why did she do it? I don’t know. None of us will ever know. I can make a guess as to why my version of Christine did it, but we will never know what was going on inside her head.

That’s not the focus of the film, solving the riddle that is Christine.

Absolutely not – exactly.

Before learning of your film, I was totally unaware of her story. Had you heard of her?

No, I’d never heard of her. It’s a funny one, because when I talk to people about it, lots of people have an odd reaction, like you have towards some urban myth or legend. People say they’ve seen the footage, and I’m always thinking: no you haven’t, because it doesn’t exist (4).

But there’s something in the consciousness that people vaguely understand the story, or the way in which it’s been filtered down through films such as Network (5).

Given that you had so little footage of her to play off, how did you prepare and feel you were sufficiently ready to embody Christine and do her memory justice?I felt that I had to be faithful to the script, above anything else, to bear in mind always that this was a piece of art, that I wasn’t trying to re-create someone who existed – and in the process, capture the spirit of someone who did something tragic. I thought it was important not to glorify the act, not to turn it into some sort of macabre act of heroism, leaning into the political statement of what she did. It’s first and foremost a tragedy. She should have led a good career and died of natural causes.

I had 20 minutes of her on TV, and that was incredibly informative because it was 20 minutes of her presenting a show that was in no way indicative of how she walked or talked throughout her whole life. To do an impression of that would have been a mistake, but it did give me a jumping-off point in the same way you can have a first impression of someone you meet and how often that gets misguided the longer you know them.

The script alleges she was a virgin her whole life. How did you factor that into your performance?

In my head, she was someone who got stunted at the point when most of us are developing who we are and how we are: in adolescence. It was a conscious choice for all of us – it’s why she had a pink bedroom and an interest in romantic songs. Behind this severe exterior, there is this adolescent little romantic girl, who’s not developed really. That was very informative.

What do you make of the irritating fact that often, the best roles for women are found in smaller films?I really think that Christine is one in a million, in terms of independent or studio. But I know what you’re saying: that there are many more opportunities in independent film for women. But I do think that Christine is unusual, in that I was allowed to be bold and not be concerned about being liked.

I think that female roles: they can be victims, they can be sympathetic, they can be in pain, they can be in suffering – but they can’t be ugly. I think there’s so much fear surrounding that, that it makes a film unlikeable, that it won’t sell. If I’m going to be honest about it: I think men get to do this sort of thing all the time. You look at countless performances by great male actors who get to play the whole gamut of human emotions. Women aren’t regularly allowed to do that, and I don’t know why people are so frightened by it. The moment you do, I’m struck by how many people come up to you. Since Christine started screening, I’m overwhelmed by the response from women and men – that it’s so rare to see something like this. We’re just not given the opportunity so much.

Rebecca Hall

Footnotes:

(1) In the Stephen Frears-directed comedy, Hall played an ex-private dancer turned gambling prodigy. Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones co-starred.

(2) Christine is still seeking distribution in the US.

(3) The footage of her suicide is untraceable on the internet.

(4) It’s believed by some that the 1976 newsroom satire was loosely inspired by Chubbock’s suicide.

THE GUARDIAN